Naming the Bones

by Louise Welsh

  ‘Still do. But not so often at parties these days.’ Jem turned the jeep. ‘So where are we headed? Tell me you’ve found a wee shebeen full of beautiful women, good whisky and fearless fiddle-players.’

  Murray laughed and realised that the archaeologist’s hearty normality might have the power to edge him into hysteria.

  ‘Sadly not. Do you know the crossroads on the marsh above the limekilns?’

  ‘I know the limekilns – they’re where our new dig’s planned – but as for the rest, you’ll have to be my guide. What are you doing here, anyway? You’re a historian, aren’t you?’

  ‘English lit.’ Murray wiped a patch of condensation from the windscreen. ‘If you go straight on for now, you’ll see a turning on the left, just after the church.’ He sank back in his seat and began to tell Jem an edited version of his quest.

  They saw no other traffic on the road, but the archaeologist kept his speed low, sailing smoothly over hills and round bends. They passed a cluster of cottages here and there showing a lit window. Then they were into the dark countryside, the full beam of their headlights unveiling drenched hedgerows and waving trees that looked like they might swoop down and snatch the car up into their branches. Something that might have been a weasel or a stoat dashed across their path and into the undergrowth. The solid bulk of St Mungo’s Church appeared on their left. The headlights glanced into the graveyard, bending across the crooked headstones and slumbering tombs. Jem slowed the car.

  ‘Left here?’

  ‘Yes, the road deteriorates now.’

  ‘No problem, we’re in a tank.’ Jem turned the wheels onto the roughcast path and their conversation back to Murray’s quest. ‘So this woman Christie could be key?’

  ‘She was intimate with Archie at the most interesting period of his life.’

  ‘It must be amazing to be able to speak to someone who actually knew the person you’re researching.’

  ‘I guess that’s never going to happen to you?’

  ‘Not unless someone invents time travel. It’d end in disaster, anyway. We’d be hailed as gods, given the best of everything for six months then sacrificed to the harvest.’

  They had left the church behind now and were climbing towards higher ground. Murray’s phone beeped, letting him know he had voicemail.

  Jem said, ‘You should check that.’

  Murray took it from his pocket. The stern female robot that guarded the exchange told him he had three new messages. He pressed 1 to listen and his brother’s voice was suddenly in his ear, Murray I … He pressed 7 and deleted without listening. The next message was also from Jack. Murray, you fuckwit … He scrapped that as well, though he guessed his brother meant the insult to be an endearment. The final message was from Rab Purvis.

  Murray, I’ll keep it brief. I had a drink with Phyllida McWilliams in Fowlers. Apparently she used to be bosom buddies with Professor James’s daughter Helen in the old days. She says the reason Fergus was in James’s bad books was simple. He got Helen up the duff then did a runner. Not the done thing back then.Poor girl had to get scraped out. According to Phyl, Helen always claimed he forced her, but Phyl was never a hundred per cent convinced. She says Fergus was a charmer, and she would have given him one for free – you know our Phyl. All in all, it sounds like the James family have good reason to bear Fergus a grudge, so maybe you should take what they say with a fistful of salt. Do me a favour and delete this message, and Phyl says don’t let on it was …

  The tone sounded, cutting off Rab’s last words. Murray thought back to the telephone call from the broch and something James had said: ‘Some people never essentially change. In my opinion, Fergus Baine is one of them. Think of how he is now and that will tell you pretty much how he was back when Lunan and he were friends – and they were friends …’

  James had been right. The two men had been friends. But James was also wrong. Fergus had surely changed. The reckless hippy who had spiked Mrs Dunn’s tea had been replaced by an urbane professor. Then Murray thought of Rachel, the blankness in her face as she’d fucked her way through a host of strangers, and wondered if James had been right after all, and Fergus Baine the same man he was on the night Archie sailed out to meet his death.

  Jem said, ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Yes, fine.’ Murray saw his own face reflected in the rain-washed windscreen and realised he was scowling. He worked his mouth into a smile. ‘Are you digging for anything in particular?’

  The archaeologist’s teeth shone whitely.

  ‘Ideally a dead body or two.’

  ‘Sounds gruesome.’

  ‘Our lot are just resurrection men at heart. There’s a good chance that there was an ancient settlement on the site of the limeworkers’ village. Officially we’re looking for confirmation that the settlement was there, but where there’s folk there’s usually bodies buried somewhere about. The peaty ground round there’s perfect for preserving flesh.’ He gave the last word a ghoulish tinge. ‘They were big into sacrifice, our ancestors. I’m hoping for a martyred bog man. Or a bog lady, I’m not particular.’

  Murray recited, ‘Your brain’s exposed / and darkening combs your muscles’ webbing and all your numbered bones.’ He pulled himself up and said, ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed you come across a murder or a graveyard.’

  The wipers swept swiftly to and fro, but the rain was winning the war, water streaming across the glass, warping their view. The crossroads came on them suddenly, its white sign worn free of destinations by long exposure to the elements. Jem hit the brakes. Murray was thrown forwards and felt the seatbelt tighten around him.

  ‘Sorry about that.’ The archaeologist’s laugh was embarrassed. ‘That seemed to appear from nowhere.’ He wiped the windscreen with his hand and peered at the blank sign. ‘Which way now?’

  Murray thought for a moment, reconstructing the direction of his journey with Christie.

  ‘Left.’

  ‘Sure?’

  He hesitated for the smallest beat.

  ‘Yes.’

  Jem turned the wheel.

  ‘Sinister it is then. Christ, I can hardly see where I’m going.’

  ‘Rotten conditions for your dig.’

  Jem lowered his voice to a comic baritone and sang, ‘Mud, mud, glorious mud, nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. It’ll be like the Somme out there.’

  ‘I’d have thought this was the wrong time of year.’

  ‘You’d have thought right. We’re at war with the industrial archaeologists. Word is they want to excavate the limekilns this summer, so we leaned on some contacts and got in first. Forecast was for a dry autumn, but as you can see, the forecast was shit.’

  ‘So will you postpone?’

  ‘Come hell or high water, we’ll be out there tomorrow.’ Jem’s laugh was cheerful. ‘We’ve a dozen students stashed around the island. I’ve pledged to keep them from drinking the contents of the shop, indiscreet drug-use and orgies, which is hard if I can’t tire them out.’

  ‘Does it ever disturb you?’

  ‘No, they’re good kids for the most part. We were the same when we were their age.’

  ‘I meant digging up the dead.’

  ‘I wish, but most of the time it’s not so dramatic. We turn up bits of crockery, bones from the midden, the odd cooking pot. A skeleton or even a skull is big excitement. But I take your point. These people were buried according to whatever beliefs and rituals they had, and then along we come and disturb their rest. But I manage to comfort myself with one thought.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When you’re dead, you’re dead. You won’t hear the sound of the shovel that’s come to dig you up.’

  A light shone wanly up ahead.

  ‘I think this might be it.’

  Jem slowed the Land-Rover.

  ‘A bit of a derelict spot. I wouldn’t fancy it, and I rob graves for a living.’ He pulled the handbrake on. ‘Do you want me to wait?’

  Murray pull
ed his woollen hat back on and zipped up his waterproof.

  ‘No, thanks. I’m staying not far from here, I can walk back.’ The red Cherokee was parked in the drive, but he was relieved to see no sign of Fergus’s Saab. Murray patted his pocket and felt Professor James’s slim volume stiff in his pocket, still in the unopened envelope it had been sent to Mrs Dunn’s in. He thought about dumping it on the seat of the car, but suspected Jem would go out of his way to return it. ‘It was kind of you to give me a lift in the first place.’

  ‘No worries. I’m bored out my skull.’ The archaeologist’s sharp teeth were hidden behind a bearded frown. ‘Watch how you go round here. The ground’s good for preservation, but it can be a bit dodgy.’

  ‘Sinkholes.’

  ‘Yes.’ Jem gave him a grin that only needed a cutlass to complete it. ‘Sounds like you know what you’re doing.’

  Murray returned his smile.

  ‘I wish I had your confidence.’

  He jumped out of the Land-Rover, slamming the door behind him, then raised a hand in thanks and jogged through the rain to Christie’s front door.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  MURRAY STOOD UNDER Christie’s porch light and watched as Jem turned the Land-Rover towards the crossroads. The archaeologist gave a friendly toot, and then he was away, driving back to the warmth of Mrs Dunn’s pink guest room or maybe off to check his students weren’t disgracing the venerable institution now so widely represented on the island.

  The Land-Rover’s lights glowed distantly then faded from view, and the cottage’s front door opened, as he knew it would. Christie was all in black, dressed against the cold in a pair of stretch pants tucked into woollen socks and a chunky polo neck that drowned her slim form. She wore silver sleepers in her ears, but was otherwise free of jewellery. It was the kind of outfit a dancer might adopt after a heavy workout, and it looked both stylish and incongruous matched with her stick.

  ‘You’re earlier than I expected.’

  There was a slur to her words, the kind of imprecision that might occur after a couple of drinks.

  Murray pulled back his hood. The scent of wood smoke mingled with the falling rain and the damp rising from the sodden earth. It was an ancient smell, the same one the earliest islanders who could yet be resting, preserved beneath the peat, had known a millennia or so ago.

  ‘Would you like me to take a walk around the block?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  She gave Murray a smile that might have been nervous and ushered him through the small vestibule into a brightly lit lounge. His glasses clouded in the sudden warmth. Murray unfastened his waterproof and rubbed his lenses against his scarf. The exam-day tingles were on him, a cocktail of excitement and dread that fluttered low in his stomach.

  The contrast between this room and Mrs Dunn’s overstuffed lounge couldn’t have been greater. The space was long and open, its oak floors laid with good rugs, the ceiling gabled. One wall was completely taken up by a large wooden bookcase loaded with hardbacks. He scanned their spines, looking for copies of Christie’s own novels, but they were absent, or perhaps his eyes simply missed them amongst the mass of other volumes. A large desk was set at right-angles to the shelves, its chair facing into the room to avoid the distraction of the view. A brown couch sat opposite a wood-burning stove, the coffee table in front of it also piled with books.

  Everything was simple and well-constructed, a living space composed of clean lines, too practical to be stylish, too cold to be completely comfortable. This was the place where she had lived with Archie. Murray tried to imagine it as it had been, the tumbled bed recess, the squalid table and circling flies, but it had grown too civilised for him to recognise.

  Unlike Mrs Dunn, Christie hadn’t yet closed her curtains. Two armchairs sat staring out onto the blackness of the moor through the large picture windows. A slim document folder rested on a small table between them. Christie led him towards the chairs and he saw that her limp had grown worse. The right side of her body swung stiffly with each step, her leg rigid, as if muscle and bone would no longer cooperate.

  ‘I thought we could talk here.’ Christie settled herself awkwardly into one of the armchairs. Murray took off his wet waterproof, bundled it on the floor beside him and sat. He could see their reflections in the glass. The two of them unsmiling on the high-backed chairs, like an old queen and her younger, more barbarous consort. He wondered how she could stand it, this view of the self imprinted onto dark nothingness, like a glimpse of purgatory. But Christie was looking away from the window, towards him.

  ‘Have you deliberately styled yourself to look like Archie?’

  ‘No.’

  Surprise made him sound defensive.

  ‘You gave me a start the day I saw you in the shop.

  Though now I look closely, I can see you’re not like him at all. Archie’s features were finer, almost feminine.’

  Murray was taken aback by his disappointment.

  ‘Do you have many photographs of him?’

  ‘Some. I might show you a few later.’

  ‘It’d be a privilege.’

  ‘The ones of him as a young boy are charming.’

  She was like a cruel child baiting a kitten.

  He leaned down and took his tape recorder from his jacket pocket.

  ‘Do you mind if I record our conversation?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do.’ He hadn’t noticed the smallness of her mouth before. It was the feature that robbed her of beauty. She twisted it as if strangling a smile. ‘Before we start, let me ask you a question: what would you like from me?’

  Murray leaned forward, opening his palms in an unconscious, ancient gesture designed to show he came unarmed.

  ‘Your memories of Archie, what he was like.’ He paused and said, ‘What you remember of his final days.’

  She nodded. ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘You mentioned photographs.’ To his own ears Murray’s voice sounded as if it had been infused with the oiliness of the life insurance salesmen who had always done so well from his widowed father. ‘I’d appreciate the opportunity to go through them, but obviously I’d also be very keen to see any other notes, letters or memorabilia you have relating to Archie.’

  ‘Strange how you call him by his first name, as if you know him.’

  ‘I don’t feel I know him at all.’

  ‘But you’re in love with him?’

  She arched her eyebrows. It was an oldfashioned style he’d encountered in some female academics of her generation, a need to provoke, as if years of being overlooked had left their mark.

  ‘I’m in love with his poems.’

  ‘What would your ultimate prize be?’

  Murray looked at his feet.

  ‘To discover a new work, even one new poem.’

  Christie smiled. ‘Of course.’ She leaned back in her chair and stared out into the darkness. ‘I think it’s only fair to tell you that I’ve written an account of my time with Archie. It will only be published, even in extract form, after my death. I should also tell you that as far as I’m concerned it’s the only statement I’m prepared to make on Archibald Lunan’s life and death.’

  Murray closed his notebook and slid his pen into its spiral spine. She had brought him here to make clear her refusal to cooperate, nothing more.

  ‘Thank you for being so frank. I’ve taken up enough of your time.’

  Christie’s tone was soft and reasonable.

  ‘Dr Watson, you must realise you’re here because there’s something you can give me.’

  He still hadn’t reached out for his coat, though it was on the floor at his side.

  ‘All I can offer you is the chance to bring Archie’s work to a wider audience, and the possibility of a more secure legacy for him.’

  ‘No.’ Christie’s gaze was level and serious. ‘That’s what I can offer you.’ Her voice grew brisk. ‘Could you go into the top drawer of the desk, please, and pass me the box you find there?’
<
br />   Murray crossed the room to her desk. He pulled open the drawer and saw a white plastic box. Even before he lifted it, he knew it held medication rather than the papers he’d hoped for. He handed it to her.

  ‘Thank you.’ Christie snapped open the lid and Murray glimpsed a bewildering range of pills. She caught his gaze and said, ‘One advantage of living miles from a chemist is that I’m issued with more or less as much medication as I need.’ She selected four tablets. ‘There’s some bottled water by the couch. Could you pass it to me, please?’ He did as she asked, then stood by the window as Christie swallowed the pills, placing each one singly in her mouth then washing them down. She choked on the last one and he moved to help her, but she waved him away. When she’d regained her breath she asked, ‘What would you do to lay your hands on my recollections of Archie Lunan and a final, unpublished collection of his poems?’

  Murray turned towards the window so she wouldn’t witness his expression. But once again the darkness threw his image onto the glass.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The nervous undercurrent he’d noticed before was back in Christie’s voice.

  ‘I’ve done what all the blackmailers do in the movies and provided you with a sample of the goods.’

  Murray wanted to look at her, but stayed where he was, staring out into the blackness, seeing nothing but the room’s reflection and the rain streaking in rivulets down the outside of the pane.

  ‘A poem by Archie?’

  ‘No, the poems are elsewhere.’ She slid a page from the folder and handed it to Murray. ‘You’ve got three minutes in which to read it. I think that should be more than enough time for a doctor of English literature.’

  Murray asked, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Read first, then I’ll tell you.’

  The paper was in his hand. He lifted it and started to read.

  Archibald Lunan and Christina Graves were born three years apart to two very different sisters. Archie’s mother Siona Roy left the island of Lismore at the age of sixteen to work as a maid of all work at a hotel in Inverness. The war came as a boon to girls like her and in 1939 she moved to Glasgow, where she became a canary bird in one of the large munitions factory. Archie arrived the year after the war ended. Mrs Lunan, as Siona was now known, was never forthcoming about the circumstances of Archie’s birth, but his arrival sent her home, to her father’s croft.